OK so this post is probably just going to be a rambling bit of nonsense while I try to get some excess words out and avoid a week of writer’s block but I’ll try to stay on the original subject.
I have had the idea for this post in my drafts for over a week but I had to wait until it wouldn’t be just about how great Torchwood is. The real reason for this post is that I was thinking the other day about what makes a good story. One of the things that I thought of was character. But what makes a good character?
This is probably the world’s most impossible question to answer because everybody likes something different when it comes to characters. One person like Captain Jack while another thinks the show is rubbish without Ianto (had to slip that in there, I’ll stop now). I happen to think that no matter the personality or actions of a character the thing that all characters have is boldness and commitment from the writer. It is one thing to think of a great name or a great back story for a character and another to actually write it down.
I already told you about how much trouble I’m having trying to stop my inner editor from stopping my current novel being written. This was not always the case and lately I’ve been wondering why this was not always the case. The answer is I don’t know. I wrote my first novel when I was 18. I was just coming off the world of fan fiction (don’t ask) and while I remember having a little hesitation when it came to knowing how to word certain scenes I don’t remember being so critical of everything that I was actually nervous about typing it. I know no one is reading it now but I feel like they are. I have rationalized it as one of those things that no one ever has to read if I don’t want them to etc. Like you do when you’re unsure about something but for some reason I can’t seem to get past fear of failing my characters enough to make significant progress on the story.
Maybe it’s length after all I have just finished NaNoWriMo and am shooting for triple that word count in this one. I pin pointed one of the problems as hating my characters so I got rid of that problem. I hated my main characters so much the first go round that I didn’t care whether or not they were alive or dead. That doesn’t happen. It shouldn’t happen so I started over.
I don’t feel the way I thought I would about that decision. I feel very liberated to be writing the characters I want to write and the story I had in mind in the first place. The problem now is I find myself being intimidated by my own characters. Just their presence in my brain seems too high and lofty a goal for me to try and put on paper. Or screen.
Yet when I look back through the veil of time and space (I wrote my first novel in another room) I see a bolder more capable writer and I think in a British accent “Hold on a minute! I’m older and that means that I’m supposed to be better now!” If not better then more able to take risks.
Maybe sometimes you just need to tell yourself to snap out of it and write already. Or maybe you just need to take a shower and put on your elephant pyjamas.
